All Campaigns subcategories:
NHS keywords:
Mental health
Highlight keywords |
Print this article
NHS cuts from a nurse's viewpoint
An NHS mental health nurse
Cameron's government claims to be 'defending the NHS.' He claims the health care budget is 'ring fenced'. Anyone working on the NHS frontline knows that this is a lie. Services, already stretched to breaking point, are being further cut by managers with little understanding of their value.
Even when Tory minister Andrew Lansley's Health and Social Care Bill was on a pause for a 'listening exercise', local cuts to NHS services were still steaming ahead. In the mental health trust I work for, the unions had notice of the first wave of redundancies that will hit nurses and others doing essential work.
Lansley's bill lines up GPs to take over NHS budgets, who will link themselves together via huge 'GP Commissioning Consortia'. These consortia will be required to be 'successful' and keep costs down. Many health services will be discontinued if they are not deemed 'cost-effective'. Working class areas, with the highest health needs, will lose out in these new arrangements.
Priority will be given to working in partnership with private providers who pay their workers a pittance and are prepared to sacrifice quality of service to make profits and keep costs down to win contracts.
In the NHS trust I work for, we are told that the 'addictions market is saturated.' A quarter of the NHS addictions in-patient bed capacity has now been slashed. Nurses have to re-interview for jobs that they have done for years. Those who are unsuccessful are dispersed or risk being made redundant.
Meanwhile the private companies are failing to provide onsite medical services, psychological services and methadone maintenance programmes. These cheaper providers, however, are now the 'preferred providers'. In health and social care service provision, competition is invariably based on price, never on quality.
Pressure stepped up
In adult mental health services, community practice nurses and social workers are under pressure to measure our interventions or 'outcomes' in a box-ticking exercise. Price tariffs are put on 'units of care' - six to twelve sessions of 'cognitive behavioural therapy' would be deemed a 'unit of care'.
We are being pushed to either discharge patients from mental health teams before they are ready or to move them onto other teams so that 'activity' can be seen. This activity is a measure of 'success' and means that the hospital trust will earn more money (this is PBR - 'payment by results').
Meanwhile the vulnerable service user is pushed from pillar to post and will be stripped of the chance to develop the sort of long-term relationship with one mental health worker that can really help.
Clearly a fightback is needed in the NHS. Trade union activity can challenge the interests of the big business vultures and their government allies. Health workers must take a stand. We know that high-quality health care services, free at the point of delivery, cannot be provided on the cheap.
Nurses' action
Along with their patients and carers, nurses suffer most from these cuts. As the largest section of the NHS workforce, we must speak out and defend our patients' welfare. We don't lead affluent lifestyles, we are from the same social class as our patients. We need to remember this before we let others higher up the health hierarchy speak for us and our patients!
Nurses and other health staff concerned at the impact of cuts must get actively involved in our trade union branches. The best way to mobilise a union branch is for members to organise, have regular workplace meetings on local issues and put collective pressure on branch leaders.
We cannot let do-nothing careerists dominate our union branches as too many have done for years. It is better to take industrial action than have an entire hospital ward or other service lost permanently.
There has never been a better time to raise the issue of a ballot for strike action in health union branch meetings. Sustained collective pressure from members is the key to getting industrial action on the agenda. We need unity and coordinated action with other public sector workers - cuts to housing, benefits and social services all undermine our patients' health and well-being.
Union members are angry and disillusioned. Ideas to unite and fight back will be welcomed by those who don't wish to fall victim to NHS trust managers' divide and rule tactics.
There will be attacks, both from health managers and even some union branch leaders but genuine activists, who keep our members' interests at the heart of everything we do, will gain these members' support.
Donate to the Socialist Party
Finance appeal
The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.
The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.
The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.
- The Socialist Party's material is more vital than ever, so we can continue to report from workers who are fighting for better health and safety measures, against layoffs, for adequate staffing levels, etc.
- When the health crisis subsides, we must be ready for the stormy events ahead and the need to arm workers' movements with a socialist programme - one which puts the health and needs of humanity before the profits of a few.
Inevitably, during the crisis we have not been able to sell the Socialist and raise funds in the ways we normally would.
We therefore urgently appeal to all our viewers to donate to our Fighting Fund.
LATEST POSTS
12 May Stop Israeli state brutality
 |
9 May Post-election meetings
15 May Birmingham Socialist Party: How can we fight for socialist change and a new workers' party?
17 May Oxfordshire & Aylesbury Socialist Party: The role of the state
18 May Bristol North Socialist Party: Liverpool - history of socialist struggle
CONTACT US
Phone our national office on 020 8988 8777
Email: [email protected]
Locate your nearest Socialist Party branch Text your name and postcode to 07761 818 206
Regional Socialist Party organisers:
Eastern: 079 8202 1969
East Mids: 077 3797 8057
London: 075 4018 9052
North East: 078 4114 4890
North West 079 5437 6096
South West: 077 5979 6478
Southern: 078 3368 1910
Wales: 079 3539 1947
West Mids: 024 7655 5620
Yorkshire: 078 0983 9793
ABOUT US
ARCHIVE
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999